Question

“Imagine a situation in which you are a nursing student and you are assigned to a patient for your clinical day. One of your tasks for that day is to do ahead to toes assessment and your clinical instructor is observing you. For your assignment, you are asked to :

• write a narrative paragraph stating your evaluation of your head to toe assessment.
• How do you think it went?
• Anything you would have changed?

Please give an example of how you would write this paragraph, imagine if you were the one that performed that assessment. (considering those bullets instructions)

This is where I am confused, is it just a narrative note explain your findings or is it more about evaluating yourself on your performance? Please give me an example of what this means.

The above bullets' instruction is exactly how the assignment was given.   

Answer 1

Explanation based on the imaginary Situation :

As a Nursing Student I was assigned Head to Toe Assessment of the patient for the clinical day and my evaluation was described below.

As a part of the assessment Jenny a 28 years old female fair in colour, normal height looks tierd with averagely nourished, and having a lean body walked in to the examination room. She is conscious, speaking slowly and looks worried about her condition. She had a normal body posture and her weight is 110lbs.She has a normal skin texture , looks pale in colour, with cool body and no lesions or wounds were present. She had no abnormalities found in shape of the face and also the skull. Her face looks pale, puffy and flushed.Eyes looks dull and sunken, conjunctiva is pale .No abnormalities noted in the ear.Lips, tounge and mucous membrane looks pale and dry. Normal neck , chest, abdomen and back. Fingers of hands looks pale, spoon shaped nails are seen. No abnormalities found in genitals and rectum.

How do you think it went?

I found this to be more satisfactory today. I was little panic as my clinical instructor observing me through out the assessment. But I found Jenny to be so cooperative and supported me through out the assessment. And I think I improved my skills in performing Head to Toe Assessment. After all my assessment I arrived to an understanding that Jenny is Anaemic.

Anything you would have changed ?

Assessing my self I noticed few things that would need a change.

• Increase my self confidence levels
• Would not have been panic even though my instructor is before
• I would rather have involved in the situation more instead of feeling that I have assigned a task or I am performing a task
• Interaction with the patient should be more
• Need to develop communication skills, and also interpersonal relations.